THE RAISIN INDUSTRY. 193 



and cattle with spreading horns and sheep without number. But we 

 see no sign of the cultivator, no horses, no signs of progress. The 

 owner held onto the land, probably expecting it to bring a price many 

 times the sum it was worth. He died, and so died the boom, and now 

 the land is under administration. When the time comes that this 

 large San Joaquin grant can be sold to farmers in small tracts, it will 

 very greatly increase the cultivable area of Orange county. 



But we pass on, leaving the open country; we are soon in among 

 the rolling lands, among foothills not unlike those of the Sierra Ne- 

 vada in the San Joaquin valley. To the left are the San Bernardino 

 Mountains, here and there a peak of boldest outline, and streams and 

 canons winding their way to the sea. At El Toro a number of passen- 

 gers got off to take the stage to I^aguna, a seaside hotel, where the 

 farmers and business men of every color, from the heated interior val- 

 leys, delight to spend a day in fishing, hunting for abalones, or in 

 watching the breakers roll against the sandy beach. A little farther 

 on we stop at HI Capistrano, or rather at San Juan Capistrano, the old 

 ruined mission, situated in the most beautiful little valley, with its 

 winding and sycamore shaded creek. The mission must have been 

 one of the very largest in the State. The ruins are yet very extensive, 

 consisting of long and regular adobe walls, and one-half of a yet mag- 

 nificent looking church, in the regular Spanish style of architecture. 

 A rather large size town of Mexican houses, with a Mexican popula- 

 tion, and venerable fig trees, tall and wavy palm trees, and large but 

 unkempt gardens, give the place a rather more important look than it 

 perhaps deserves. There is but little sign that the boom was ever here. 

 Still the valley is so beautiful and evidently so fertile, that it needs 

 only work and taste to make it equal to the very best. We see yet 

 the old mission pear trees, large and untrimmed, not unlike our droop- 

 ing oaks, loaded with pears to such an extent that there appears 

 hardly room for a blackbird to get through. The mission grapevines 

 are all dead. Gigantic vines, which covered trellises and arbors, and 

 which perhaps bore tons of grapes, with trunks as heavy as the body 

 of a boy, are there yet, but without leaves and young shoots ; they 

 are dead, having surrendered to the vine pest of the country. 



After leaving Capistrano we follow the little creek to the sea. The 

 valley is from one-half to one mile wide. Here and there are flourish- 

 ing little vineyards, but mostly pastures and cornfields or patches of 

 beans. At last we reach the sea, the Pacific, calm and blue, with 

 breakers lashing the shore. To the right we leave the rocky promon- 

 tory of the Capistrano Mountains, and for an hour or more run on the 

 very beach. In stormy weather the spray of the breakers must wet the 

 cars, which run only a stone's throw from the water's edge. This part 

 of the route is the most interesting and the most refreshing to one 

 coming from the interior plains. We are now in San Diego county. 

 The shore is abrupt and bluffy, the hills bordering on the sea. 



At Oceanside we meet the first of the boom towns, one of those that 

 sprang up for pleasure and profit, towns of magnificent villas, broad 

 streets and avenues, lined with infant blue gums, with rows and hedges 

 of the ever-bright geraniums, and with large and splendid-looking 



